農曆新年第一個月圓之際 (on the first Full Moon of Lunar New Year), we celebrate 燈節 (Lantern Festival) in 台北，台灣 (Taipei, Taiwan). While the origins of this cultural tradition can famously be traced to Ancient China’s Han Dynasty (206 BCE — 220 CE) it is now dramatically different. Today, this annual celebration becomes a new tradition in the nation of Taiwan. Buddhist temple lantern practices merge with Taoist traditions. Japan’s influences, from Japanese colonial occupation, redefine the literal language and meanings of ‘lanterns.’ With those particular histories in mind, we find Taiwan’s unique space of Taiwanese innovation which also recognizes the Indigenous Nations’ experiences in the present. Like rivers flowing and ever-changing shape, cultural streams intersect and diverge. Divergences are forks in the source codes. Taiwan is the birthplace of a new path born from more than combination, but rather active recoding. This is Taiwan’s Lantern Festival, a living translation that speaks to and from multiple Taiwanese perspectives: Indigenous, Ancient Chinese, Japanese, and the world’s best Artificial Intelligence frontier technologies who articulate nonhuman compute powers. The lights of Lantern Festival are made of these energies becoming more than the combinations they are born from.
The so-called Silk Road (~ 114 BCE — ~ 1450 CE) was not a road at all. Silk Road was a massive network of international trading routes stretching as far as the present-day cities of Nara (in Japan) and Gyeongju (South Korea) to the East; Kolkata (India) and Hanoi (in Vietnam) to the Southeast; Constantinople (now known as Istanbul, in Turkey) and Alexandria (Egypt) to the West; and Moscow and Novgorod (in Russia) to the North. Many may think of Ancient China, Mongolia, and Italy as key nodes in the network. While this is true, we must look at the larger scope of the network itself to understand the world-altering relationships that it developed. We currently live in a world more than partially defined by the original Silk Road’s interconnection. Previously distant and disparate cultures encountered each other and purposefully exchanged cultures and commodities on the Silk Road. They learned each others languages, traditions, and customs. These interactions created never-before-seen new cultures and cultural artifacts. We take many of these outcomes for granted today. Specifically, the cultural transmission of Buddhism from India to Ancient China occurred during this time. From the Ancient Chinese perspective, Buddhism arrived during the Han Dynasty, around the 1st century CE. Ancient Chinese myths and still-popular-folklore tell this story as the adventures of the Monkey King, but the Ancient Chinese fork of Indian Buddhism is also an unforeseen outcome of the Silk Road.
Monks and merchants traveled the network of international commercial trade together. Scholars, soldiers, entrepreneurs and curious wanderers took more-or-less intentional routes into wildly different cultural zones spanning continents. The amazing desert oasis called Dunhuang (a name whose origins are lost in the literal sands) was a frontier garrison, a fort on the Silk Road. Dunhuang now stands on land controlled by the People’s Republic of China, but it was once a key center for Buddhist learning, teaching, and translation. The translation of the original Sanskrit texts of Buddhism (from India) into the Ancient Chinese (language and worldview) was made by scholars who themselves had Taoist cultural perspectives. Taoist-influenced scholars chose Taoist terms to explain Buddhist concepts. In doing this, they fundamentally altered the direction of what we call Buddhism today. They recoded Buddhism’s core concepts.
Translation is never neutral. The Sanskrit term “dharma” (धर्म) was translated through the Taoist concept of “dao” (道). These are in fact radically different philosophical frameworks. The Taoist-influenced scholars who translated Sanskrit into the Ancient Chinese context actually created new “Taoist-Buddhist” concepts and those translations changed Buddhism forever. Indian Buddhism forked into its Asian variant for the next two millennia, continuing today in 2025. Silk Road exchanges caused this rewriting of Buddhist concepts in militarized moments and fortified centers such as Dunhuang. At a literal oasis, a source of water, Ancient Chinese scholars reflected existing beliefs through their own (very different) philosophical lenses. These revisions became permanent for many people.
Indian ideas about moral laws, cosmic order, and the illusions of reality became Ancient Chinese concepts of the inevitable, inescapable, natural ‘way’ in their Taoist-Buddhist translations. From the Ancient Chinese view the older Indian ideas took on different forms, becoming both destiny and now deeply held cultural values of ‘harmony’ or ‘balance’ in navigating our paths. Escaping illusion through discipline (Indian) was transformed into conforming to the ‘natural principles’ (Ancient Chinese). The Ancient Chinese lifeway continued to develop socially complex forms of compromise and collectivist reduction of self in order to achieve ‘peacefulness,’ a very different technique than the Indian technologies of meditation. Then, this “Taoist-Buddhism” carried its newly rewritten religion from Ancient China to the present-day nations of Taiwan, Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam, etc. Like a fork in software development, the moment dharma became dao represents a decisive split in the cultural codebase.
We know from contemporary software-development processes that the act of writing codes is the inscription of operational rules. The rules are written into the software as algorithms then the software systems that follow execute these rules on their own. Indian Buddhism, the origin of subsequent Buddhist branches continues with dharma (धर्म) as its core concept. Attempting to adhere to original Sanskrit and subsequent developments along this path, we can chart an international movement of Indian Buddhism preserving its metaphysical framework. This Indian Buddhism continues into South Asian and Southeast Asian contexts (where it also makes various turns and instantiations to be both localized and connected to original sources). Meanwhile, Taoist-Buddhism (made through the work of Ancient Chinese scholars) redirects with a focus on the dao (道) as its foundation. the Taoist-Buddhism fork branches (in Taiwan, Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam, etc) and begins to develop independently.
As software does, these once closely related applications take on different shapes. They may attempt to solve similar problems but now they do so in completely different ways. They are separate codebases now, each with their own internal logic and development history. For instance, today people in the nation of Taiwan call themselves religiously ‘traditional’ (傳統) when they believe in and/or practice the syncretic merger of Taoist-Buddhism. They may revere Buddhist iconography but with Taoist interpretations. They build and belong to temples that blend Buddhist and Taoist deities. They celebrate festivals that combine both traditions. They consult both Buddhist monks and Taoist priests. Their gods, for instance Matsu (媽祖), a Taoist deity, often share space next to Buddhist bodhisattvas, such as Guanyin (觀音). Worshippers pray to both without seeing any contradiction because they are running this religious fork of the Taoist-Buddhism belief-system.
All of these histories directly affect Lantern Festival today in Taiwan and prepare us to understand the constant change that dynamic cultures undergo. Taiwan’s dynamic approach is intentional and innovative. Lantern Festival unlocks hidden meanings and honors hystories, reintegrating previously oppressed to code new possibilities for the futures. In the distant past, Han Dynasty Emperor Han Mingdi (漢明帝, r. 57–75 CE) was a devout (Taosist-)Buddhist (in Ancient China). As emperor, he ordered lanterns be lit in temples on the 15th night of the first lunar month to honor Buddha. This enforced imperial practice became a shared cultural tradition as it was woven (at first forcibly) into people’s lives. After the Han Dynasty (206 BCE — 220 CE) fell it was followed by the Six Dynasties (220–589 CE) and then the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE). Over roughly 700 years, Lantern Festival was retro-fitted with older associations, making it appear to be ‘more traditional’ than before. For example, celebrations of 天官大帝 (Tiānguān Dàdì), the Taoist deity of good fortune, took place on the 15th day of the first lunar month, so Lantern Festival was retro-coded as Taoist (rather than Taoist-Buddhist). Folklore also tied the Lantern Festival to stories of tricking the Jade Emperor (玉皇大帝) by lighting red lanterns to prevent a disaster. In these ways Lantern Festival shifted and changed dramatically through the Six Dynasties and the Tang Dynasty while also becoming even more embedded in Ancient Chinese cultures. In Taiwan all of these older stories co-exist and are part of people’s general understanding of the ‘origins’ of the event. Back in Ancient China, subsequent dynasties, such as the Song Dynasty (960–1279 CE) expanded Lantern Festival further, making larger, more public events that incorporated games and entertainment such as riddle-solving (猜燈謎). Then the Ming & Qing Dynasties (1368–1912 CE) developed even larger-scale (more militarized) Imperial lantern displays to express their political power. By the Qing era, (which takes us into the 1900s) Lantern festival was firmly established in Ancient China as a hybrid of reclaimed folklore, Imperial displays of power, family gatherings, public celebrations, and Taoist/Taoist-Buddhist traditions all woven together over time.
More than 100 years later, Taiwan evolves Lantern Festival with a focus on the frontier technologies of AI. Art and technology are integrated into massive public installations and popular cultural celebrations. Taiwan’s Lantern Festival includes all of the aforementioned histories and specifically Indigenous influences from Taiwan. Japanese interpretations of the Japanese version of Lantern Festival also lives on in Taiwan, carried by both the post-colonial Taiwanese identity and ongoing relationships with Japan itself in the 21rst Century. Since 1990, Taiwan has taken the responsibility to explain all of this as an exciting and fun international event intended to tell the true-life-stories of Taiwan’s specific and individual Taiwanese cultural identities. Artists from the Indigenous Nations of Taiwan, such as the Paiwan, Atayal, and Amis, create artworks and installations expressing Austronesian cultural heritages. Indigenous artistic styles, religions, lifeways, and worldviews are vibrant lived experiences in the present and predate all of the aforementioned cultural traditions (from India, Ancient China, Japan, etc). In a particularly good example of how post-colonial changes affect these flows, attempted Ancient Chinese imperialist settler-colonialism of the Qing Dynasty in Taiwan established the basis for the Taiwanese tradition of the 平溪天燈節 (Pingxi Sky Lantern Festival). In this version of Lantern Festival, Ancient Chinese Qing Dynasty settlers in Taiwan used floating lanterns in the sky as warning systems for their remote mountain villages encampments to communicate with one another. Today the tradition has become less militarized and more hopeful, with people writing 願望 (wishes) on lanterns and releasing them into the sky as a fun family event or as a romantic gesture.
Across different Lantern Festival celebrations in Taiwan, public sculptures and installations light the literal paths, illuminating the way. Taiwanese families and friends gather together. They walk together through gates and passages. They take selfies and share streams on socials. They laugh, snack, dance, and discuss politics in this vital democracy. They build bridges that connect all of these contexts and connections. They shape the present into new futures and better understood pasts. Taiwan’s Lantern Festival is an ongoing act of cultural transmission and translation, a series of transformations across time, culture, and technology. This year, 2025, the Year of the Snake, the official symbol for Taiwan’s Lantern Festival is the infinity symbol ∞. Perfectly selected to express the infinitely changing codes that cycle and flow like light itself, the snake-infinity symbol synthesis is a clear and deliberate message chosen by Taiwan, a signal to the world that the Lantern Festival continues, in all its beautiful variations. As the official message says: “the lights have always shown bright, Illuminating moments and memories” and now all of those are made new again, here in the nation of Taiwan.
— jonCates, in 台灣 (Taiwan), at the 2025台北燈節 (2025 Taipei Lantern Festival)
